Something of Yourself
by Rabbit Pie
Summary: Yuugi has lost his other half, and only Harry has the power to put him back together again. Not Romance


**Something of Yourself**

_Yuugi has lost his other half, and only Harry has the power to put him back together again. (Not Romance)_

_This story contains a _**Very AU Harry**_ from an alternative story line - which could be a fic in itself. Knowledge of Hallow and Horcruxes is essential. Also, you'll need to read between the lines, but I'm fairly sure that every question I pose here has an answer._

1.x

"Please!" Yuugi was begging with tears running from his eyes. Harry felt those small hands on his shoulders as he was knocked against the rough, unyielding surface of the wall. Yuugi held him there, staring up wide-eyed, teeth clenched.

Harry stared back, outwardly unmoved while his thoughts raced. _Yuugi_, he thought, _I want to give into your demands more than anything. But how can I, when we both already know how this will end?_

Seeing something of these thoughts in his eyes, Yuugi fisted his jacket and shuddered against him as a harsh sob racked his body. He collapsed forward, and Harry felt his legs jar and buckle. He was unable to stop their quick slide down into a crumpled heap. His jacket rode up and his back stung where the wall grazed his naked skin.

"I can't," Harry mumbled to his friend. "I just can't."

"You can!" Yuugi jerked out of his lap and stared up into his eyes. "You can! You just don't want to! You know what it's like more than anyone, and you won't give him back! You were my last—my last hope."

Yuugi struggled to his feet and stared down, his face twisted into a grimace that was angry, wretched and terrified.

Harry couldn't bring himself to keep looking. He glanced away, feeling the sting of his own betrayal. But it wasn't a betrayal, was it? _He was helping Yuugi, wasn't he?_

2.x

"Harry."

The voice came from behind him.

Harry twisted around. He recognised Anzu, a friend of a Yuugi's. Her eyes were blazing and her hands were cocked sharply on her hips. She glared at him like he was the scum of the earth.

In the pit of his stomach, Harry felt that he was.

"You call yourself his friend," Anzu snapped as she strode up to him. "I'd never heard of you before, but somehow I believed it. These past few weeks, while he was waiting for you, Yuugi's been the happiest he's been in ages. He was hopeful. He laughed. But now that you're finally here he's sobbing in his bedroom and he won't let anyone in!"

Harry's heart ached. He wanted to look away, like he had when Yuugi had pushed them both against the wall. But that was a coward's move, and he wasn't a coward. He was going to stand here and he wasn't going to run while every word she spoke drove the knife deeper.

"I want to stand here and say you haven't got a clue what he's gone through! But it's obvious that you're the only one he's spoken to about Atem! So you must _just not care_!"

Harry shook his head. No. No, she was wrong. He cared. He cared so bad. Yuugi didn't speak about Atem, not even with him. Harry knew barely anything about Yuugi's life these past few years.

"No? Then why don't you show that you care!"

Harry snapped his teeth, suddenly angry.

"How dare you! I care! And how's _caring_ going to help anyway—you care and it isn't helping, is it?"

Anzu reared back.

"No, no it hasn't. I..." she deflated suddenly and turned away to wiped her wet eyes on the back of her hand. "I just. When Yuugi was waiting for you, he was like before. I hadn't seen him smile in… it feels like a year. And your mere memory could make him smile like he—like he was blowing out _birthday candles_. And now you're here, and he's _worse!_"

She glowered.

"You must have done _something_ wrong!"

3.x

The bell of the Game Shop tinkled as Harry stepped through the doorway. He hunched his shoulders against the wide-eyed, pleading look Yuugi sent at him from behind the counter and shuffled into the back.

However upset Yuugi might be, he was a still a gracious host. He wouldn't evict Harry. Harry thought that maybe that wasn't such a good thing. He couldn't imagine what it was like for Yuugi to have Harry in his personal space.

"Am I doing the right thing?" he hissed lowly as he stepped into the lounge.

There was a pause, and then Nagini slithered over the back of the couch. She stared at him for a long time, but even with their long acquaintance her reptilian expressions were a mystery to him.

"_We_ endured," she said after a while, and Harry nodded in understanding, a weight settling in his heart.

_They_ endured. Harry and Nagini endured together. They had help in Harry's friends, who had slowly learnt to trust him and understand what and who, exactly, he was.

Harry sunk into the couch. He had incredible friends. How could they be anything but, when they stuck by him even after they all learned the terrible truth?

And Yuugi... Yuugi had been the first to know. He'd been the one that accepted him with open arms and a wide-open heart. He'd never judged. He'd sat with Harry as Harry slowly came to terms with the nature of his existence.

So why wasn't he doing everything he could to help Yuugi? Just a few words, and it would all be over. Yuugi would be back to the cheerful boy who helped him through his darkest moments.

If Yuugi had done that for him, why couldn't he do the same?

"The choice, in the end, is not yours any more than it is mine," Nagini reminded him, and went to find a warmer spot or maybe a nest of mice.

4.x

Harry was the last to know.

Jonouchi – another of Yuugi's friends from his home town – stood guard over the hospital bed, arms crossed and legs apart. Harry's shoulders trembled and urged him to shrink back, but held himself firm. His eyes wanted to glitter with tears, but he ordered them dry and didn't look away as Jonouchi stared him down.

You deserve it, Harry told himself what he already knew.

"Yuugi tried to kill himself," Jonouchi said bluntly. "Is that what you wanted to know?"

No, Harry _never_ wanted to know such a thing in his life.

"They're keeping him here. He's going to have to see a fucking psychiatrist!"

Jonouchi hissed in a deep breath.

In the Wizarding world, they'd chug him full of happy potions until they could get him shipped off to a mind healer, Harry thought to himself.

"It's all your fault!"

My fault.

Harry tried to look past Jonouchi, but the young man moved with him. He couldn't see Yuugi, but he could imagine him in his mind's eye. How had he done it? Harry didn't know.

With a knife, so that death would come red and bloody in trails down his arms, so that the essential would never reach his heart?

In a bath, so that death could close over his mouth and strangle his lungs, never letting him take another breath of that life-giving oxygen?

On the streets or railroad tracks, so that death could come huge and fast and inescapable, a single blow to destroy a life in a moment?

Harry couldn't see past Yuugi's protector, so he left.

5.x

Sugoroku served Harry tea in the golden cup with the badger ensign. It seemed strange, Harry mused, to have tea in such a cup. He slid two fingers through the two handles and brought it to his lips.

_They_ were broken, they all were. But when he sat down to drink from The Cup, for a small moment _they_were almost together again. The rim of the Cup touched Harry's lips and passed on the liquid that was essential for his life, and Harry, in return, gave the cup purpose and fulfilled its reason for existing as he drank. The richness of _their_ union, the rightness of _their _combined purpose, was beautiful.

That rightness. Yuugi, Ron, Hermione; everything else was pushed to the side. This was what he lived for. This was _him_.

So why could he deny Yuugi this rightness? Yuugi, who had once known that rightness so well that he had come to take it for granted?

How could he do that?

6.x

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," Yuugi said, curled up on the couch in a cocoon of blankets.

Harry looked up from the GameBoy Colour and listened. Curiosity niggled at him, and something within him swelled in nervousness and pleasure. Yuugi trusted him enough to talk about this. But what would he say?

"I just wanted to be with him," Yuugi continued. His hands shook where they held a mug of hot chocolate crowned with pink and white marshmallows.

Harry frowned in displeasure. What was the difference between wanting death and wanting to be with the dead?

"I would miss you," Yuugi continued. "I would miss you and Honda and Anzu and Jonouchi and, and Gramps and everyone."

Harry nodded. The pleasure and the nervousness was gone, smothered by sympathetic sorrow. Five days into his trip to stay with Yuugi and thousands of miles away from his friends and he wasn't missing them. But to be separated by a barrier as insurmountable as death...

"I'm scared though," Yuugi whispered, closing his eyes.

Harry nodded again with mere acknowledgement. He wanted to lean forward. To get out of the armchair and cross the room. The Yuugi of the past would have appreciated contact, but Harry was not sure where he stood with Yuugi now.

"What are you scared of?"

Yuugi took a sip of his hot chocolate. When he took another sip instead of answering, Harry's heart fell. He should not have pushed. He had no say over how much Yuugi said to a person like him, who had betrayed his trust so badly.

Yuugi began to shudder. The milky brown hot chocolate tipped over the edge of his mug and Yuugi tried desperately not to flinch as it splashed over his fingers. He inevitably jolted further, and more spilled. Yuugi flinched back against the pain and the mug fell from his parted fingers until it hit the ground with a crash.

The mug lay in pieces, and the brown liquid spilled over the floor. The half-melted marshmallows were splattered like eggs.

Yuugi cradled his injured hand and stared over at Harry.

"I want to die, but I'm so glad I didn't! I'm so terrified of death, Harry! I just. What if—"

Yuugi cut himself of guiltily, and Harry saw Sugoroku peering through the door, his expression shocked. They both froze and silently hoped that he hadn't heard them.

As he entered, Sugoroku had eyes only for the hot chocolate.

"Yuugi, carefully step around that and run your hand under cold water. Harry, it would mean more than I could say if you could clean that up for an old man."

7.x

Someone knocked timidly on the door to Harry's room. Harry paused, the words he was speaking to Nagini dying on his tongue. He got up, and opened the door for Yuugi. No-one else knocked like that.

Yuugi smiled shyly, his hands hidden behind his back.

"Come in," Harry said, and held the door open.

"Okay," Yuugi said, and stepped inside. He looked about the room for a bit.

"Um, I forgot to bring any-do you have any scissors?"

Harry shook his head. If felt odd like this, standing and talking to Yuugi in front of the open door to his room. He didn't much like it.

"I have my wand, if it doesn't need to be terribly precise," he said. "And—could you close the door?"

"Of course!" Yuugi answered, and turned a little pink. He closed the door, keeping his hands out of sight.

Harry sat down on the bed, feeling deeply uncomfortable. He put his hands in his lap, and when that didn't help he tried laying them next to him on the bedspread.

Yuugi sat next to him.

Harry smiled, Yuugi's action unexpected and pleasing. Hope filled him and looked expectantly at Yuugi.

Yuugi held up the thing he had been hiding. It was a photograph of himself, taken fairly recently. More recent than any of Harry's moving photographs of him, anyway.

"I guessed if you still, you know, keep a photo of me in the locket that you might, um, want a better version?" he asked.

"A better version?" Harry asked, but took the locket out from where it was hidden in his shirt. It opened with a single hiss of parseltongue. A photo of Yuugi smiled cheerfully and waved from the first frame.

Harry took at the photo that Yuugi was offering him. The Yuugi in the picture was with Anzu and Jonouchi. He looked very serious, too serious for the cafe setting, and his smile was small. Yes, the photo was more recent, but Harry couldn't see much about it that was better.

Yuugi was staring at him anxiously.

"Okay, thank you," Harry said belatedly.

Yuugi's face crumpled with his acceptance of the gift. It was well hidden, but Harry could see it.

Harry was alarmed. He looked back at the picture. What was wrong? He'd thought Yuugi wanted him to have the photo. It was better, Yugi said...

Oh.

Oh dear.

"Yuugi," Harry said, lifting up the photo was the someone who was undoubtedly the Pharaoh. "I'm going to need a pair of scissors for this."

Yuugi nodded.

Harry smiled to himself, hoping he was making the right decision.

8.x

"Yuugi!" Harry called, perhaps an hour later. Yuugi, who was stirring something on the stove with his unbandaged hand, glanced up in enquiry. Harry grinned to himself, and presented his friend with the open locket.

Yuugi's eyes widened, and then his face turned an alarming shade of grey. "Uh, uh," he stammered. "What. Why'd you..?"

Harry's grin widened impossibly. He took back the locket and staring at the two Yuugis that were smiling out of the photo. It was nice to have both sides of Yuugi wrapped up within the locket's protective magic and hanging close to his heart.

"I'm not sure why you said that Atem is a better version of you," Harry said.

"He is," Yuugi muttered, looking into the pot.

Harry huffed irritably. "Yuugi, listen to me. Am I a better version of Voldemort?"

Yuugi blinked up at him in confusion. "You're not Voldemort at all. You're just... a different part—well, you're um. Not Voldemort at all."

Harry nodded. "Yes. I'm Voldmort, but I'm not Voldemort at all. I'm someone completely different. Tell me, isn't it the same with you and the Pharaoh?"

Yuugi scowled. "That's different."

"Is it?" Harry asked.

"Yes. You were born Harry Potter."

"Who's to say you weren't born Mutou Yuugi?"

Yuugi glared at him, then suddenly giggled. _He giggled!_

"What?" asked Harry, attempting to pull an affronted look over his joyful smile.

"It's just," Yuugi croaked around his mirth. "Imagine what that would sound like to anyone else!"

Harry paused for a moment.

"Ahh. Yes. I imagine it would sound rather odd."

He wanted to ask something else, but this moment was so precious, so happy, that he just couldn't.

9.x

Yuugi gave a defeated wave to Jonouchi and stepped into the house. He greeted Harry with a sad sort of smile that hurt to look at.

Harry looked at him with concern.

"My friends really don't like you," Yuugi said miserably. "I mean, I didn't think I much liked you before, when you refused to help. But now," he looked up at Harry. "I understand what you're thinking. You think I'll go insane or take my life, like all the others did. You're really, really wrong, but I understand what you're thinking."

"You're getting better," Harry whispered. You've got to be getting better.

Yuugi gave a small grunt of affirmation.

"I—I wanted to tell you what I almost said before. See if you know. I mean, you, are the so-called Master of Death."

Harry grimaced at the cool-sounding but ultimately meaningless title. "Um, okay, but can we sit down?"

They sat down. Harry desperately wished he could have gotten them a platter of biscuits and some drinks as well. Maybe coffee. He might stuff it up a few times. Anything to delay the inevitable.

Yuugi rested his forehead in his hands.

"Harry, I said I'm afraid to die. It makes me want your cloak, so I can shroud myself in it and never ever meet death at all. Because, what if I'm in another part of the Afterlife? What if I never see mou hitori no boku again?"

Yuugi spoke to the floor. He didn't look up when he had finished.

Harry's heart felt heavy and he put his own head in his hands.

Yuugi, please be alright.

10.x

_Written over the course of Harry's stay with Yuugi._

Yuugi's so quiet.

_Maybe he's sick of you bothering him._

Don't be like that, you don't mind.

_I don't. It surprises me sometimes, to be honest._

Of course it does, you have the emotional range of a teaspoon.

_Quoting your friends, Harry? That's plagiarism._

You are no essay.

_Indeed I'm not. The things you write to me have very little sense. Not to say that may not also be the case with your essays._

You are the youngest. I wondered if you would able to understand, to know how to help him.

_Harry, the last person I met even remotely like him was your friend Ginny, and her problem wasn't that she had been _freed_ from possession._

I don't know why I write to you. I should hate you for that.

_But you do not. For what good would that do?_

Do you remember _her_?

_I do._

I remember _her_. I remember the pain. It was worse than Voldemort's death, _she_ was one of _us_! I loathe fiendfyre.

_The searing pain of having your soul torn away. It's even greater when it is a part of your soul that you love and cherish._

_She_ would speak to me, even though she had no way of talking. _She_ would show me which books to look in. If I was not learning, I always knew I was trying to learn the wrong things.

_Well, what good has it done in the end? Your friend, when the other half of his soul died, it was not like Voldemort. It was like the Diadem._

Please, don't write that word.

_I am sorry. It is hard for a book to feel pain._

Here, in this house, I see how little he is eating. How little he plays. How fake his smiles are. He has become a better actor since I knew him well.

_Will you do anything about it?_

I don't know! I don't know! I really don't know. Just tell me how and I _will._

11.x

Perhaps it was inevitable.

Harry stands in the middle of his bedroom. Nagini lies on the sun-soaked wood of the table beneath the window. The Cup sits next to her, half-filled with orange juice. The Diary is open on his bed.

Voldemort is dead, his death had been painful, but it had to be done. It had been as quick and clean as it had been painful.

The Diadem is long gone. It had been destroyed by Voldemort's hands. The hatred Harry feels for the part of his soul that killed her is still present. He aches for _her_ every day. He remembers the time he tried to read one of Hogwarts' few adventure stories, and understood nothing as _she_ gently egged him back into his study. He had grimaced and rubbed his temples plaintively. _She_'d been such a pretty, smart, intelligent thing, and even though _she_ was no longer there, _she_ would live on in all of their memories.

The Locket hangs around his neck. So close, he could feel its protectiveness as it encased images of all his friends.

Of his newest friend, Atem.

Harry takes the Ring from his finger and rubs his thumb over the symbol of the Deathly Hallows.

"This is up to you," he tells the Ring. "I can spin this stone and speak the right name, but only you can call forth the spirits of the dead. But I beg you, as one part of a soul to another, to help my half-souled friend regain what we will never again have.

"For unity, for Trinity," he whispers.

Harry turns the ring.

"To be complete again.

"Atem."

x.x

**Explanation**: This fic comes after an epic story (which I fear shall exist only in my head for all eternity) in which Yuugi gets mixed up with Harry in Britain. This Harry has been overcome/absorbed by the part of Voldemort that infected him. He is essentially a part of Voldemort's soul, so when he eventually kills Voldemort to save his himself and his friends he destroys a part of his own soul. He gains allies in his fellow horcruxes and gets lots of help from Yuugi. In the process, he manages to get his hands on all three of the Deathly Hallows.

Then, after years of sporadic communication, Yuugi invites Harry to stay with him in the hope that he'll revive Atem with the Resurrection Stone.

So, how much of that did you get?


End file.
